On The Road Again

MEXICO | Thursday, 4 July 2013 | Views [498] | View Smaller Image

The Misión San Ignacio Kadakaamán, founded in 1728 by Jesuit Juan Bautista Luyando, springs upon the southbound traveler invisible until the last moment, bedded in a verdant arroyo amongst missionary date orchards. It is here that the trip to Palmarito begins in earnest, where the office of the Instituto Nacional de Anthropoleía e Historia connects the resident guide to the traveler. Every night at sunset vultures turn overhead working at the minds of Baja peoples in this difficult desert environs.

Traveling in Baja California is desert-empty punctuated by spots of relative density; a pattern creating rhythm while on the road. Even in winter, once out of the relative cool of the upland wine country in the north, the sun is unrelenting and a bed sheet or even a raised hand can be respite from the glare. The rhythm and the respite let you know you are here, as the Indians and Spaniards were before you- traveling through history towards prehistory.

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On the road to Palmarito the reality of the Cochimí traveling this landscape by foot from the mountains to the Pacific and the Sea of Cortez is made manifest. What could the lives of the paleoindian painters that preceded the Cochimí have been like? We know that they traveled great distances to procure their pigments; that the act of painting was likely a part of ceremonies enacted to achieve terrestrial goals by supernatural means, dwarfed as they were by this vast landscape.

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On The Road Again

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